When the documentary maker flew into the US to make a film about Sarah Palin, half his crew were arrested and deported. And things went downhill from there, as his colourful diary records...

Deliverance country: Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin

OUR COLD WELCOME

October 24, 2010: We’ve arrived – or I have. Half my film crew have been arrested and deported. Everything is going fine at Seattle airport until they find out we are doing a film about Sarah Palin. The authorities go mad. They search our bags and detain my two researchers.

Sarah, 22, is subjected to a urine test against her wishes – just in case she is pregnant and tries to get citizenship by giving birth on US soil. Her colleague Mark is spreadeagled against the wall and given a rectal search before being handcuffed. The 25-year-old spends the night on a filthy floor littered with cigarette butts. They are both sent back to England, supposedly because they don’t have the right visas.

My cover for the documentary is
blown. Discretion was the key. But thanks to our airport kerfuffle, the
Wasilla branch of Homeland Security – an organisation dedicated to
protecting America from terrorist activity (are my films that bad?) –
has been told all about us. Instead of slowly ingratiating myself into
Sarah Palin’s home community, I have landed in a blaze of notoriety.

As I lie on my bed in the deserted
Best Western Inn with a view of the frozen Lake Lucile and Sarah’s
peach-coloured, two- storey home looming tantalisingly in the distance, I
am pretty dejected. There isn’t even a mini bar.

METHS IN THE MADNESS

October 31: We still need somewhere
to live but our fame is making that difficult. Wasilla has two estate
agents. One has thrown me out of the office. The other offers a big,
rundown house clad in brown timber. The heating system is bust. It is so
hot upstairs that we sleep with the windows open. Downstairs remains at
minus 25 degrees, whatever we do.

Strip-lighting hums constantly,
illuminating the puce-pink walls. Stained white shag pile, a greasy
microwave and filthy windows make the house, in short, disgusting. But
it is the only place left to us.

There is one amazing bonus. There are
plugs everywhere, perfect for a film crew. This is because the house
has been a base for drug-making. The former residents have tarnished the
oven with meths, part of the manufacturing process.

Wasilla is Alaska’s methamphetamine
capital. This little town of 8,000 people and 76 churches has the
unlikely distinction of supplying most of the state with illegal drugs.
At first, driving past the evangelical billboards, it’s hard to believe.
But when I learn that Wasilla holds the state record for child abuse,
incest and suicide for young gay men, it makes more sense. The magical
Talkeetna mountains surrounding the town make it look like God’s Own
Country, but all those superstores and the freeway plunging through the
town have messed things up.

We have requested an interview with Sarah and her lawyer has not yet turned us down!

MEETING MOM AND DAD

November 7: The extreme environment
is beautiful but tough. You feel the ice going into your lungs as you
breathe. Daylight starts at 10am and finishes at 2pm. To stay healthy,
we hit Dinali’s gym. Every morning, at 6.15am, we don shorts and jump
into our Ford Focus, the tyres studded with nails for the icy roads.

Two very large ladies arrive at
7.30am every day and snaffle the only two changing rooms. If we don’t
finish by then, we have to wait ages for a shower. A born-again
Christian called Dick tries to chat to us on each of our visits. He
wants us to renew our faith in the Lord.

My film team has been allowed back
through customs and we can – finally – start work. Still no word from
Sarah’s lawyer. But there is an encouraging welcome from her parents,
who invite me in for a chat.

CHARM AND EYELASHES

November 14: We’re still trying to
get an interview with Sarah and time is running out. So we fly to
Houston in Texas, where she is signing books. We queue up and ask her
directly. She is charm itself. I ask her for an interview, she flaps
her eyelashes and says: ‘You betcha, I could.’

Destroyed: Once-pretty Wasilla was wrecked by planners

TOO SCARED TO TALK

November 21: Not everyone finds Sarah
quite so charming. Many are frightened to talk. Sarah, a former Mayor
of Wasilla and vice-presidential candidate, is very influential. Friends
and supporters have been banned from speaking. But there are a few folk
who have fallen out with her and don’t mind saying so.

We throw a dinner party and invite
the local pastor, some of Sarah’s old acquaintances, and a neighbour
and sworn enemy of Sarah called Colleen Cottle.

We rustle up pork loin as a change
from our all-moose diet. Moose is delicious; like venison, only better.
But there’s a lot of it. A single moose keeps a family for an entire
winter. Our guests bring moose sausages.

The conversation is tortured. One of
the wives gets annoyed. Her husband had talked to us for the film and,
coincidentally, had lost his job. Word spread that we were responsible
for his unemployment. The wife walks out. The night wears on. We drink
an awful lot of whisky.

Sarah’s lawyers are still
prevaricating. But her father, Chuck Heath, has, miraculously, agreed to
an interview. Chuck is a former science teacher, athletics coach and
all-round Alaskan.

FEET THAT SPEAK VOLUMES

Icy: Antler's sold by Sarah's dad

November 28: We find a dishevelled
labrador in next door’s yard, howling. We take it in and give it a
name: Knik after the local river.

But the hound soon gets us into hot
water with Sarah’s father. Chuck asks where I got it and I blurt out
that we are living near Colleen. His attitude changes. We have
fraternised with the enemy.

The only way I can get Chuck to speak
to me is to buy moose and reindeer antlers from his mountainous
collection. They are $150 a pop. He is getting less communicative as the
days go by.

But he does reveal something more
powerful than his words ever could. Chuck points to a picture on his
wall of some mangled feet. They are his.

He explains he once took part in a
marathon across the snow and that his toes filled up with pus. Luckily,
he had packed a hand drill and bored through his digits to release the
fluid. He finished the race.

You understand a lot about Sarah’s unbelievable drive and grit when you see the picture of her father’s feet.

BIKINIS AND REDNECKS

December 5: We set off on snow-
mobiles to a restaurant called Islander Lodge. You can tell it is a
classy joint by the fake palms and laminated menus. Another night we
visit the Bikini Bar, opened to cater for workers building a nearby
prison. A 22-year-old brunette opens the window and enquires: ‘How can I
help you today?’, wearing nothing but two scraps of fabric over her
very generous, goose-bumped chest. In such a religious community, it is
hil- ariously incongruous.

We go to a bar across the way. It is
full of bearded, beer-guzzling rednecks. All heads turn as we walk in.
Silence descends. Our researcher is not unattractive and the guys’ eyes
are out on stalks. It is like Deliverance on ice. We don’t go back.

THE FAT OF THE LAND

December 12: There is obesity here on
a scale I have never seen before. The community is divided between
those who hunt, fish and hike, and those who just eat. In the local
Target superstore, the aisles are super-wide to cater for people so
enormously large they need mobility scooters. Some come to Alaska for
the wild beauty of its outdoors; others hide in their cabins and live
off food stamps.

JESUS'S GARDEN... RUINED

December 19: It is time to go back to
Britain. It’s clear that Sarah has no intention of giving us an
interview. We have made dozens of applications to speak to her. It is
all the more frustrating that we have been on our best behaviour.

To while away the long dark nights, I
have been reading an old black and white book about the formative years
of this strange little town. In Early Days In Wasilla, Louise Potter
writes of the pioneering spirit, the magnificence of the mountains and
the wild flowers. She calls it Jesus’s garden. That was before the oil
rush of the Seventies and Eighties, when Wasilla swung sharply to the
evangelical Right.

I genuinely admire Sarah’s
celebration of the outdoors. Yet as Mayor of Wasilla, she deregulated
planning laws to allow the complete destruction of what once had been a
very pretty town.

‘Wasilla,’ says Sarah’s father, ‘has not exactly turned out the way I would have liked.’

Elusive: The main source of protein in Wasilla is moose meat

GIVING IT ONE LAST SHOT

March 2011: We are back in the
States. We need to finish the film and I am determined to speak to
Sarah. The snow has melted and Wasilla looks very different. I can’t say
that it’s improved. A few people are pleased to see us. Most are not.

There is growing criticism of Sarah
after the shooting of congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Texas. Sarah
had published a map placing the crosshairs of a gun over Democratic
areas supporting President Obama’s healthcare plans. Mrs Giffords, a
Democrat, had warned there would be consequences. And there were. She
was shot.

We decide that the only way of
reaching Sarah is to attend a rally. We find one billed as a ‘question
and answer’ session. The questions are all scripted. With some
difficulty, I shout: ‘Do you think your political career is over?’

This is met with an audible gasp from the packed auditorium. Sarah looks startled. And I am escorted from the building.

Sarah’s corporate backers could
hardly be described as friends of the common man but my ears are still
ringing with the cheers from her fans as I am ejected. And I know there
are millions of ordinary Americans just like them, intoxicated by her
weird mix of ditzy charm and hardline polemic. The national mood is
against her.

But I’ve no doubt she will be cashing in on their support for some time yet.